Twitter users! Change your password, now

I subscribe to an Australian government website called ‘Stay Smart Online’. The site sends me notifications of current security alerts, and this is the latest:

‘As a precaution, Twitter is urging more than 330 million users to change their password after a glitch left log-in details exposed in the company’s internal computer system.

When you set a password for your account, Twitter uses technology that masks it, so no one can see your password.

The company recently identified a bug that stored unmasked passwords in an internal log. Twitter found this error itself, removed the passwords and is now looking at how it can prevent this from happening again.

Twitter has advised it has fixed the bug, and has no reason to believe the passwords left Twitter’s systems or were misused by anyone.’

Despite these assurances, however, you really should change your Twitter password now. More importantly, you should also change your password on any other sites where you used the same password.

I know you’re not supposed to ‘re-use’ passwords, but I’m just as guilty as everyone else because my memory is simply incapable of storing hundreds of passwords. I have special passwords for my banking accounts, or accounts that deal with money, that don’t get shared, but for the main social media accounts that I log in and out of multiple times a day, well….:(

Anyway, I’ve just gone through and changed mine, so I’m a good girl now. 🙂 Are you?

Please don’t ignore these warnings off as you never know when they’ll come back and bite you on the bum.

Meeks

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About acflory

I am the kind of person who always has to know why things are the way they are so my interests range from genetics and biology to politics and what makes people tick.
For fun I play online mmorpgs, read, listen to a music, dance when I get the chance and landscape my rather large block.
Work is writing. When a story I am working on is going well I'm on cloud nine. On bad days I go out and dig big holes...
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I got the warning from Twitter. Thanks very much Twitter: you **** up your security and now we have to put right every other website where we use the same password. Social media companies’ ineptness never fails to stagger me.

To be fair they did warn me when someone tried to open an account using the Alien Noise email. (Those people don’t realise what happens when they mess with Alien Noise…)

For what it’s worth, if I were giving anyone security advice it would be pay the extra to hide your details when registering a domain name. I nearly inherited £4 million pounds from a Chinese bank when I decided to leave my details public on the domain registry.

‘..if I were giving anyone security advice it would be pay the extra to hide your details when registering a domain name.’
I had no idea those details were in the public domain and had to pay to get then hidden just recently. 😦

lol – Yes! I received an email from Twitter as well…/today/. -rolls eyes-
As for that website, I don’t think it’s restricted to Aussies. If you want to register they’ll send you alerts ahead of the game. Of course, you might also get some stuff that only applies here, but the local stuff you could ignore. 🙂

PInky!!!!!!!!! I really, really hope you’re pulling my leg. ?!? Not only is 5 characters a breeze to crack but you’ve now told the world that you have an easy peasey one AND it’s linked to your Amazon account which is linked to your bank account which is linked to your MONEY!

Please, seriously, this has nothing to do with /them/ and everything to do with protecting yourself. 😦

-facepalm- Amazon hasn’t been hacked, as far as we know, but that doesn’t mean it /can’t/ be hacked. More importantly, if you re-use the same weak password in more than one place, you increase the chances of it being hacked enormously. And once it’s hacked in one place, ‘they’ will try it in all sorts of other places to see if they get lucky.
As for the whole online security thing, no such beast. Everything you do online is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is you. Being a needle in a haystack is no longer a defence. 😦

I changed my password on Twitter as soon as I saw the warning, and I revoked access to most of the apps I had previously allowed (I didn’t remember doing it for half of them). ‘Tis a new, complicated world, that’s for sure.

Yeah, I forgot to mention revoking access. Thanks Carrie. I revoked mine too. I had 1 that I knew of and 3 that had me scratching my head.
I just hope security is AND privacy issues are fixed before something truly disastrous happens. Not holding my breath though.